Digital images are commonly used for many different purposes in computer systems, especially with respect to selling and buying goods and services through an e-commerce website or software platform. For instance, it is commonplace to list a product item (hereinafter, “item”) for sale on an online marketplace and include one or more digital images of the item with the listing. Depending on the seller, the type of listing, and the item being listed, the seller may use a digital image depicting the actual item for sale (e.g., when the item for sale is an item previously owned or used), or use a stock digital image that represents the item for sale (e.g., a stock digital image provided or used by the manufacturer to sell instances of the item).
Generally, it is a challenge for users to search for items on an e-commerce website/platform by keywords. For instance, it can be difficult for users to provide appropriate or exact keywords to describe an appearance of an item, especially one relating to fashion (hereafter, “fashion item”), to search for the fashion item.
As a solution, technologies have emerged that permit a user to provide a digital image (e.g., by capturing it using their mobile device) that depicts an object of interest and use the captured digital image to search (e.g., on an e-commerce site/platform) for an item that matches the depicted object of interest. Such a search may involve the user providing the digital image in place of, or in addition to, one or more search keywords to search for the item. For example, a user can capture a digital image of a human individual (e.g., in public or on the “street”) wearing a fashion item (i.e., the object) of interest to the user, and use the captured digital image to search for the depicted fashion item on an e-commerce website/platform.
For some technologies, facilitating an image-based search (also known as a visual search) of an item, using a user-provided digital image depicting an object of interest as search input, involves generating, based on the user-provided digital image, one or more stock-quality digital images that depict an item that is identical or similar to the object of interest depicted in the user-provided digital image. The one or more generated stock-quality digital images can then be used to search for items that are similar to the item depicted in the generated stock-quality digital images. The items found by the search may be, for example, items listed for sale on an e-commerce site/platform that are represented in the sale listing by one or more stock digital images (e.g., ones provided by the item manufacturers).
Unfortunately, it can be technically challenging to perform stock-quality digital image generation based on a user-provided digital image depicting an item such that the generated image resulting from the image generation is similar enough to the stock digital image representing the item (e.g., in an item catalog of an e-commerce website/platform) that the generated image can be used to search for the stock digital image using on the generated image. This is particularly true where a user-provided digital image, depicting a fashion item as found in the public or on the “street,” is used to generate a stock-quality image (e.g., to perform a search for a stock image representing the fashion item). Such a user-provided digital image can include, for example, where the user-provided digital image is captured by the user in public and depicts a human individual wearing the fashion item of interest. In such an instance, the human individual's pose may orient the fashion item in the user-provided digital image differently than it is depicted in a stock image used to represent the fashion item on an e-commerce site/platform, the fashion item depicted in the user-provided image might have partial self-occlusions, or the user-provided image may be one taken under challenging lighting conditions. As a result of such difference,
The headings provided herein are merely for convenience and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the terms used.